Of course, there was also the need to keep up appearances for my husband’s sake. Come to think of it, take the two factors combined, and I bet I look like a saint. Except for everything he’s undoubtedly done his best to undo since I’ve been gone. Painting himself as the victim. Pointing fingers at the money. There was a time it would have made me sick, filled me with a rage that might even rival his own.
But it doesn’t matter anymore.
He can’t touch me now.
31
A grief counselor will be on hand throughout the week, by appointment, in the human resources suite. It can take time to fully realize the impact such a sudden and shocking event may have on those involved. If you find yourself questioning whether you might benefit from this service, please take advantage of it while it’s available.
—Monday morning corporate memo to all employees
Clara had finished talking, and it was clearly Izzy’s turn to say something. It was just that she couldn’t imagine what the appropriate response to such a story might be. Clara’s eyes had a faraway look, and she’d grown pale, as if the story had taken her back to that hallway.
“She was…?”
Clara nodded, and the lump in Izzy’s throat bobbed closer to the surface.
“I’m so sorry. Did they catch the guy?”
“He didn’t get far. I don’t think he had much interest in not being caught.” Clara hugged herself and shivered, though the room was almost muggy from the overexcited furnace returning from its summer hiatus. “Dale wouldn’t stop beating himself up that he hadn’t gone back to the room with her, but it probably saved his life that he didn’t. He was hiding there, waiting. He had a big knife. He didn’t know that she and Dale weren’t more than friends. He point-blank told the cops that if he couldn’t have her no one could.”
“Jesus.” Izzy was trying to remember if she’d heard about this on the news. She hadn’t always spent so much time swimming in tragic headlines—and domestic violence stories were so sadly common they had a way of running together. “What was his name?”
“I don’t like to say his name.” Clara’s eyes were steely. “It doesn’t matter.”
Izzy thought back to that first night after Kristin’s disappearance, the way Clara had come in and muted the TV coverage of the mass shooter. What was that line of poetry she’d quoted? Something about victims rising above with their beauty. Fraught as that night had been, Izzy had never seen Clara so serious as she was now. Gone was her self-deprecating humor and fully in-the-moment presence. In its place was a jittery hand-wringing Izzy had never seen in her friend before. And most unnerving of all, it was being directed at her.
And Paul.
“It haunted me, for a long time,” Clara said quietly. “It wasn’t just the unthinkableness of it. It was the unfairness, that somehow I ended up with Benny—God, I spent that whole damn night mesmerized by the ring on my finger—while Liv, who was not very unlike me at all, ended up … you know. There’s no reason one of us deserved one fate, and the other…”
Izzy tried to imagine what it might be like to try to wipe the picture of a blood-streaked hallway from your mind when the image wasn’t one you’d simply seen on the news but one you’d stood in the middle of—and when the blood belonged not to an anonymous victim but to a friend who moments before had been sitting with you at dinner, laughing, smiling, breathing, living. She felt small by comparison, hung up as she’d been on her own brush with unfairness. Just this afternoon, she’d managed to let go. The wind turning her cheeks pink, the warmth of Paul’s leather coat soaking into her core. And now …
“This is a horrible story,” she said cautiously. “But what does it have to do with Paul?”
Clara bent to open the drawer at the base of the end table, removed a stapled stack of paper with The Color-Blind Gazette laser-printed across the top, and handed it over without a word. Izzy started to read, feeling her heart tighten. How had she missed this? It had gone out to the whole neighborhood? She lifted her eyes to Clara, who nodded.
Her hair fell over her face as she forced her way from one paragraph to the next and questions flooded her mind—too many to voice.
But while the details of the article were troubling, they also could be circumstantial. One thing was certain: This was not “good news,” and even as she read, a back corner of her mind worried over her own interview with Hallie, and whether she’d given the girl any reason to try to seek out the “real story” behind her day-to-day—a thought she impatiently shoved aside. This wasn’t about her. It was about Kristin.
It was about Paul.
She thought of his mention of canceled appointments, his quickly disguised frown. Was this why? What humiliation for him, to have this out there.
She sneaked another glance at Clara, but her neighbor was no longer watching her read, only staring blankly toward the large back windows. A short distance through the darkness, Paul was probably sprawled on his own couch, alone, his ears burning.
When she reached the end, Izzy took a minute to absorb the sight of Clara’s name in the credits and set the paper on the couch next to her.
“Same question,” she said, trying to keep her voice flat. “How does what happened to your friend Liv have anything to do with Paul?”
Clara met her eyes with a look that said she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to spell it out for her. “Izzy, I’ve seen how quickly a relationship can turn deadly dangerous. When no one would have suspected.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully, though clearly she’d planned to deliver this speech all along.
Izzy thought back to that hike weeks ago, side by side in the ravine, how mystified Paul had seemed as to why he could have been left, how despondent without any lead on the twins. What he’d said about his childhood—it had seemed to her that all he really wanted was a second chance at a family. And to give someone else a second chance at one too. It hadn’t worked out, but plenty of marriages failed. When people got defensive about “blaming the victim,” they didn’t usually mean the man in the relationship. But that was how Izzy was feeling on his behalf now. It just didn’t seem to add up.
“You’re not implying that Paul did off with Kristin and the kids?” Izzy forced a laugh. “There’d have been more to this if the police really suspected such a thing.”
“I’m implying that we don’t know what went on, but the worst is always possible. I’m implying that I’ve missed my chance to recognize the signs of trouble, to intervene and help a friend before, and I’m not about to do it again.” Her voice was taking on a decidedly un-Clara pitch, high and tense.
“You told me yourself, that first night after she left, that you never saw any evidence of domestic violence next door. Don’t you think we would have seen or heard something?”
“I was blindsided by what happened to Liv. In hindsight, I’ve learned abusers don’t always have obvious red flags—bursts of temper, the stuff you see on made-for-TV movies. With Liv’s ex the warnings were more subtle. Always checking in with her, keeping tabs, in a way that seemed a bit obsessive to the rest of us but to her seemed sweet. Trying to keep her to himself—talking her into skipping our happy hours to meet him, for instance, instead of him just joining the group. He had an ego, gave off a vibe that she should be more grateful for things he’d done, even though it was just ordinary relationship stuff no one else would expect a medal for.”
“But plenty of men who are like that are just being sweet, and do just have fragile egos.”
“They usually mellow out as the relationship gets comfortable, though, right? With Liv, this guy got more intense as time went on.” She leaned forward. “I told you Kristin’s sister came to see me. She blamed Paul for their estrangement, said he isolated Kristin from her family, manipulated things, made her overly reliant on him from the very start.”
The last part seemed to be directed at her, which was ridiculous. A gate latch and a taillight were hardly the equivalent of fatherless twins. “That’s he
r side of the story. Like I said, when it comes to sisters…”
Izzy found herself blinking back tears. She was in no position to be judged through her sister’s eyes—and Penny would rightly say the same of her. Had their closeness ever been what it seemed? Surely if they’d truly been in tune to each other, things would have turned out differently.
“You’re right,” Clara conceded. “But still, with Paul, there’s reasonable doubt. Why did Kristin follow him here, when it meant being farther from her mom, who was terribly sick? She went all in on their life together, so even when it didn’t work out, why would she take the kids from him? Why search online for domestic violence help right before she disappeared? You know as well as I did it didn’t come up around the fire that night.”
Izzy was tired of people trying to figure out why things happened. Why that first date didn’t call back for a second date. Why someone would go into a crowded place with a loaded gun to punish the wrong people for things beyond their control. Why certain lives are rocked by crisis while others glide peacefully by. Why anyone should risk falling in love at all. So much, too much, of our lives spent fruitlessly searching for explanations where there are none.
Clara seemed insatiable in her search for answers. Or maybe she was just caught up in it so tightly she couldn’t break free. But Izzy was tired.
Maybe it was time to stop harping on the whys of the world and instead look for a new who or what.
“I don’t know any such thing,” she told Clara, trying not to let irritation show. “Like I told you, I can’t remember the whole night. I don’t even remember going home.”
Clara shook her head at her. “Well, I can assure you no one mentioned the subject.”
“You were drunk too. Maybe it was you.” Clara stared, the blood draining from her face, and Izzy felt she’d pushed something she shouldn’t have, but she was too irritated to back down. She shrugged. “Maybe you mentioned Liv?”
A weighty silence filled the room, and when Clara finally spoke, her voice was soft and cool, but clear. “I do not talk about what happened with Liv. When I do, it’s for good reason. In this case, the reason is this: The very possibility that something is not right with Paul should be enough to keep you away. The stakes are too high. I’m telling you, from personal experience I wish I didn’t have, that the best line of defense against men who are programmed this way is not to get involved with them from the start. Once you do, it can be incredibly hard to get away. Maybe impossible. Look at Liv. Look at Kristin.”
Izzy considered Clara—who always seemed so thoughtful, so self-possessed, if a bit scattered at times. But she didn’t seem that way now.
“Do the police know about this … this thing you were involved in?”
Clara sighed. “They do. I’d been interviewed as a witness, subpoenaed to testify, though it never went to court. He ended up pleading to a lesser charge.”
“A lesser charge?”
“Eighteen years from now, he could get out. Depending on what the parole board decides. These people, they’re out in the world, Izzy. They don’t always get what they deserve—not even when they get caught.”
She could see how Clara would be overcautious. She could. But she could also see how Clara would be paranoid. Fearful of perfectly harmless men. She didn’t love the idea of her hurling accusations around. Not here in the quiet of her living room, or on the pages of this newspaper, which Izzy tapped with a brusque finger now.
“Your name is on this.”
“I had promised to help Hallie with the paper—in general terms—before I knew what she planned to put in it. When she brought it to me, I told her not to publish it.”
How had Hallie even known? Izzy shook her head. That seemed beside the point, since this was old news to everyone but her. No wonder the girl had frozen up that day in the yard when Paul had appeared. Izzy, as usual, had had no clue.
“I know it doesn’t look good that my name is there,” Clara said, “but frankly I don’t care about that. I care about you. I lost a friend all those years ago, and I lost another when Kristin vanished—for whatever reason. I don’t want to risk losing you too.”
Maybe Izzy really was the only one with any sympathy for Paul. Maybe that was why she always seemed to be the one to cross his path—from that very first day he’d come across the street, worried and confused. Because no one else was interested in being anywhere near it.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but who I choose to spend my time with isn’t up for debate, okay? There’s another side to this in which Paul could really use a friend right now.”
Clara sighed. “I’ll say it again—I don’t care about him either. I care about you.”
“Well, maybe I care about him.” Izzy didn’t know whether it was true on anything but a surface level, but Clara looked as if she’d been slapped. “He’s lonely, Clara. He’s probably the loneliest person I know. He even has me beat.”
Clara’s eyes filled with such pity and concern that Izzy had to look away. “Loneliness is not a bond upon which to build a relationship,” Clara said quietly.
Izzy blinked at her. “Could have fooled me,” she said. “Seen a rom-com lately? They make it seem far less pathetic than it is in real life. Where it happens all the time. Hop on Match and see for yourself.”
“So you’re saying there are plenty of lonely people to choose from, then,” Clara shot back. “If that’s what you want, choose one of them. I’m begging you, Iz. I have a bad feeling. Kristin’s sister did too—all along.”
Izzy sighed. Earlier today, unexpected and strange though the whole motorcycle ride had been, Izzy had gone inside, shut the door, and smiled.
It had felt so good. Just to smile a genuine smile into an empty room. To be a giddy girl home from a date, if only for a moment. She had expected that kissing anyone but Josh would feel like … well, like giving up, she supposed. It was ridiculous, really. He’d given her up long ago. But the fact that she hadn’t felt that defeat but, instead, a spark of energy, had given her a jolt. And a good kind of jolt. Not necessarily one that was specific to Paul—she wasn’t sure about that yet—but one that hit her like the beam of a searchlight.
Now, only a few hours later, she was already ruining the small thrill of the afternoon. She was ruining all of it. Izzy had heard enough.
“I promise, if I get a bad feeling, I’ll stay away.”
She stood to leave. Clara looked defeated, and in spite of her simmering anger Izzy felt a pang. Clara was only trying to be a friend. “I’ll keep all of this in mind,” she added weakly. “I’ll … I’ll think about it.”
Clara bit her lip and nodded. Silently, she walked Izzy to the door.
Izzy was starting down the front porch steps when she caught Clara’s final words in the cold night air.
“Think fast. Please.”
But by the time Izzy turned around, the only thing there was a closed door.
32
As shoppers but also as humans, we have a tendency to confuse wants with needs. Wonderfully, the new charitable shopping initiative at Moondance boutique combines the two.
—Intro to “Much-Needed Moondance for Syria,” in The Color-Blind Gazette
“Mommy? When can I go back to school?” Clara reached to clear Thomas’s empty breakfast plate and he pouted up at her as he had every morning that week. It figured. Most kids wake up asking why they have to go to school, but Clara had the one who wanted to go and couldn’t.
She’d been playing a long game of phone tag with Pam at the Circle of Learning, and Clara, too, was growing restless. Benny had marched down and unleashed a rare fury in the school office the instant Clara had told him what happened, but it only dug them in deeper with the director, who then emphasized the need for a “cooling period.” Still, some three weeks had passed, and the “distractions” had come to a lull—surely enough was enough. Yet Pam persisted in dodging her calls.
“I’m sure it’ll be soon, sweetie. I left another message yes
terday. I’m just waiting for them to call back.”
“What about Abby and Aaron? When will they be back to school?
Clara sighed. Her answer was always the same—that she didn’t know and, more gently, wasn’t sure they would be back to school—yet he kept asking.
Halloween decorations had transformed the neighborhood into a mischievous version of its former self, cottony spider webs stretched across porch railings, billowy ghosts dangling from tree branches, jack-o’-lanterns in bay windows, and it had dawned on Thomas that he’d more than likely have to trick-or-treat without his usual companions this year. He’d been especially pouty ever since, and Clara was determined to have him back at school for the class parade and the “Being healthy is a treat—no trick!” party afterward. Though Clara, too, had lost her Halloween compadre in desperately seeking recipes for said party that did not involve candy or, heaven forbid, food coloring. Last year Kristin had saved them both with an idea for scarecrow veggie skewers. She and Clara had giggled as they assembled the awkward creatures, drinking hot apple cider with spiced rum on a Saturday afternoon right here at this table. It might as well have been a lifetime ago.
Maddie triumphantly hurled a handful of Cheerios from her high chair, and for once it was a welcome distraction. Pup-Pup came running in a skittle of nails across tile, and she couldn’t resist a smug smile that for all the new messes the dog had brought into their house, there were also a few she no longer had to clean up.
Frantic squawking cut through the morning air so suddenly that Clara jumped, half expecting to turn and find a gaggle of chickens inside the house. But no, they were sounding through the window she’d cracked when the toaster had unleashed a random burst of superheated aggression on Thomas’s frozen waffle.
“Oh, shoo! Shoo! Wait, not you! Come back! Oh, hell…”
Not That I Could Tell: A Novel Page 24
